Christopher Reich - Rules of Vengeance

Oblivious to the intricate system of motion sensors installed throughout the villa, Jonathan entered the house. His presence activated a silent alarm. The signal did not go to the French police. Instead it directed a message to Alex’s phone, and to another location more than a thousand kilometers away.

The villa was larger than it had appeared from across the hill. At first glance, it was a man’s home. The furniture was sparse and modest. A high-end sound system held pride of place in the living room. There was a plasma-screen television and a leather recliner, and a framed poster for the 2010 World Cup. The kitchen was so immaculate as to appear unused.

Jonathan advanced from room to room, methodically pulling out drawers, scanning shelves, opening closets. Reaching the end of the hall, he found a door that was locked. Without hesitating, he backed up a step or two, then delivered a ruthless kick below the handle. The door didn’t budge. Returning to the kitchen, he searched drawers for something useful, settling on a stainless steel meat tenderizer. He ran back down the hallway and attacked the lock with precise, brutal blows. The handle bent, then broke. The lintel splintered and the door opened.

It was a study decorated in a proletarian style. Metal file cabinets lined a wall. There was a map of Europe above the desk and an old Revox shortwave radio on a side table. The MacBook Pro on the desk, however, was decidedly more modern. The laptop was open, the screen-saver showing a photograph of Earth floating serenely in space.

Jonathan sat down and hit a key. The screen flashed to life, flagged with dozens of icons. He noticed immediately that the letters weren’t Latin but Cyrillic. Alex’s accent wasn’t Hungarian or Polish. It was Russian.

At first the symbols were incomprehensible. Jonathan spoke only a tourist’s rudimentary Russian, picked up during a six-week teaching stint in Kabul, Afghanistan, shortly after the American invasion in the winter of 2003. As many Afghani doctors had been trained during the Russian occupation twenty-five years earlier, he’d been given the choice of Russian or Pashto. He chose the former.

Jonathan was more conversant with the Mac’s OS X operating system. Moving the cursor to the Spotlight bar, which searched the hard disk’s contents for designated keywords, he typed in “Lara,” “Emma,” and “Ransom.”

A window opened and filled with the names of all files containing one or more of the keywords. Several had obscure titles, like “Report 15” or “Communication-February 12.” But the fifth that appeared displayed the name Larissa Alexandrovna Antonova in capital letters.

Jonathan double-clicked on the file.

The screen lit up with a scanned copy of a typewritten personnel report. The name Larissa Alexandrovna Antonova appeared at the top of the page. “Born August 2, 1976.” A black-and-white photo was attached to the upper right-hand corner. It showed a young woman, perhaps eighteen years old, with porcelain skin and eyes that dared the camera to come closer. The girl’s hair was pulled into a bun, and the collar of a military uniform rode high on her neck.

It was Emma.

Jonathan felt nothing, which was worse even than disappointment.

A stylized header was emblazoned across the top of the paper. The words looked familiar. All the same, it took him nearly a minute to sound it out for himself.

Federalnoya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti .

Federal Security Service.

The FSB.

Jonathan continued reading, losing himself in the dense, monotonous text. He was unable to decipher many of the words, but those he understood were enough. He read while the clock chimed a quarter past the hour. He read as the Peugeot pulled into the garage bay carved out of hillside below and footsteps climbed an interior stairwell. He heard nothing. He noted nothing. The present had ceased to exist. He was lost in the horror of discovery. He had disappeared into the past.

Page after page he read, as every artifice was stripped bare, every lie exposed, every falsehood revealed. It was Emma’s secret history, and in a way his own. The sheer accretion of detail was numbing. Dates, places, names, schools, principals, classes, examinations, recommendations. And then a shift from academic to military. More schools, courses, units, fitness reports, political reliability, surveillance reports, promotions, and finally, and most interesting of all, operations.

There were photographs, too.

Emma as a schoolgirl, rail thin, with the worst eczema Jonathan had ever seen and a cast on one arm. Emma in uniform, an induction picture. But how old? Fifteen? Sixteen? Too young to serve, to be sure. Emma in uniform again, now with a rank at her neck, her skin cleared up, a proud jut to her chin. Older now, maybe eighteen, her face fuller, the eyes more confident.

Emma in civilian dress receiving a diploma, shaking hands with her superior, a portly gray-haired man twenty years her senior with terrible circles beneath his eyes. On the wall was a plaque bearing a sword and a shield, the symbol of the FSB. And on the photo, a stamped date. June 1, 1994.

And then other photographs, taken when Emma was unawares.

Emma on a parade ground, passing for inspection with a corps of female cadets, rifle at her shoulder.

Emma and a girlfriend shopping on a busy urban street.

Emma in her apartment, a glass of wine to her lips.

And still more photographs. Private ones. Photographs taken in the line of duty for purposes of extortion. Photographs that sickened him. All with the stamp “Nightingale” laid across the bottom in small black script.

Nightingale . It had been her code name with Division, too.

“You are surprised?” asked a soft, cultured male voice.

Jonathan jumped in his chair. He spun and saw Alex at the door, a pistol trailing from his right hand.

“Who did you think she worked for?”

“I didn’t know,” said Jonathan. “Not you, anyway.”

“She’s Siberian. Who else would it be?” Alex waved the pistol. “Stand up. Come with me. Don’t worry. We don’t want to harm you. You were good to Lara. We are not the kind who do not show their appreciation.”

“If you want to show your appreciation, you can start by putting away the gun.”

“A precaution.”

Alex frisked Jonathan, and when he found no weapon, motioned for him to walk down the hall. “You would like some water, perhaps? Some cheese?”

“I’m good,” said Jonathan. “You can tell me one thing. What do you have Emma doing?”

“You mean Lara? I thought you knew. Isn’t that why you dragged me down to Monaco?” Alex nodded toward the living room. “Alarms everywhere. I wasn’t gone ten minutes before I was notified.”

“You paid twenty-five thousand euros to get her out of the hospital. It wasn’t for nothing.”

Alex answered with a cryptic smile.

In the kitchen he placed a phone call. He spoke rapidly. Jonathan was unable to comprehend a word. When he hung up, his face had hardened. “What did you read on the computer?”

But Jonathan had a question of his own. “Where’s Simenon?”

“Please, Dr. Ransom. You are in my home. It is my turn to ask the questions. What did you read?”

“Nothing. I don’t speak Russian.”

“Really? Tell me, then, how did you teach the doctors in Kabul?”

Of course they knew about him, thought Jonathan. Their surveillance didn’t stop with the pictures taken at Oxford. “Her personnel file,” he admitted. “I just saw a few pictures.”

“That is all? You are certain?”

“It was enough.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about. You’re sure you don’t want anything? Take an orange. They are blood oranges from Israel. We must make a drive now.” The Russian slipped his keys out of his pocket. “Stairs at the end of the hall. After you…”